Strangers on a train

On Monday I was shivering in my co-op office, today is Friday and I am boiling in the seemingly summer of this early April. Ah, the vagaries of virtually everything.

We are on the train to Wolverhampton and we have met Mel Michael. Turns out he's an actor too, but we are mainly talking about tea, android phones and how I have to grin all the time in order not to look demonically furious. Bartelt and I find it so easy to get talking to people. Everywhere we go we get into conversations and we've been laughing all the way from Euston with Mel. We've become friends on facebook whilst on the train: that's how close we are. We're so close that Bartelt guessed Mel's surname with No Clues.

My mother's excellent cousins Lesley and Denny came to the show last night. During their lives they have both had their fair share of loss, and I love them. When my grandfather was in hospital dying for three nights after a massive stroke I spent quite a lot of each night at his bedside, with a different configuration of family members: one night my South African aunt and her knitting, another with two cousins over a card game and the third, Lesley, Denny and I laugh and drink and laugh some more. They're great. In fact, they are so great that when Martin and I finally admit defeat and marry one another, we will have them as bridesmaids. And my mother's other cousins. And my aunts. My young friends are wonderful, but why would I not want these fantastic women, friends and counsellors to me for all of my life, not to be central at my never-to-occur-notional wedding.

Bartelt and I end up going for supper with them near Charing Cross and we talk about everything, death, obviously, but we also consider the idea of my wedding. To veer from the sublime of death to the ridiculous of anyone every wanting to marry me/me ever wanting to marry is most enjoyable. But we decide that they will be my bridesmaids. I add that the rest of Mum's cousins and her sisters will have to be my bridesmaids too. I tell them I'm going to put them in taupe and peach, to which they object. They are obsessed, like my mother and aunts, with bright colours: and the older they get the brighter their clothes. I know that I am approaching middle-age, a time for women to vanish, but I also know that it is a family tradition to do this in bright, well-made clothes. mostly from charity shops, and with strongly-held opinions.
Ah, you marvellous role-models.

We part company. Denny's daugher Rachel is coming to the show tomorrow night. Rachel's dad died when she was seven and we were very close as friends as children, though separated by miles, and avid letter-writers. It will be interesting to see what she thinks about the show and it will be lovely to see her. On our way home Martin tells me again and again how he loves Lesley and Denny, and of his jealously of my relationship with so many members of my excellent family. He has every reason.